Welcome to the beat. I'm Ari Melbert, and we have two different major stories developing right now.

First, President-elect Donald Trump will face sentencing in that New York Hush Money trial.

Remember, that was the one criminal trial that actually happened amidst his many several indictments over the past couple of years.

So this is now scheduled. This is new information we got late today. It will actually be happening in days and before inauguration. It comes because the judge denied President of like Trump's request to just have the whole thing dismissed. So we have more on that story as part of our broadcast tonight. It's in this segment. In other words, you'll be hearing more about that before we even get to our first commercial.

But that's not the only thing going on. Today also marks not only this new year that we're all

starting as people trickle back in from a break, a vacation, from celebrating. Today is the actual

first day of the new Congress. And House Republicans reelected Mike Johnson as their speaker today. So that is a big deal.

You had all of the pageantry, all the new members coming in, people being sworn in. If they are,

of course, coming in off a new election, it would be their first time. You can see the events on the

House floor. The first order of business is the House Speaker vote. Johnson won. This came after some scuffling,

some indications that maybe some folks in the Republican Party wanted a repeat of what happened last

time, which of course set up the events that ultimately led to Mike Johnson as the replacement

to Kevin McCarthy. There was talk about holdouts. There was even a kind of a nail-biting vote.

Here's how it played out. Johnson could only afford to lose the support of just one Republican.

He has lost three. This was a muscle flexing of a minority of the party, of the Republican Party,

demonstrating to Speaker Johnson, we can take you down

if we want to. These people are insanely destructive.

Republicans now in what should be a stronger position, seeming to not send the message that

they're ready to govern. This is really literally as self-destructive as I've ever seen a political party be.

Speaker Johnson is leaving the floor.

Donald Trump told him, hey, get in line.

We saw the two lawmakers approach the front there and changed their votes.

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